www-rousette-org-uk-ku8whc.txt (15523B)
1 [1]Fruitbat logo 2 3 but she's a girl... 4 5 • [3]about 6 • [4]archives 7 • [5]microblog 8 • [6]photos 9 • [7]tags 10 11 [8]Exploring desktop Linux 12 13 written by [bsag_avata] bsag 14 26 Aug 2024[9]geekery[10]linux 15 Screenshot showing a browser window on the Hyprland web page, in a window 16 without decorations. A minimal statusbar is at the top of the screen. 17 18 Hyprland with status bar adapted from Archcraft version. 19 20 I don’t know about you, but the direction that macOS has been going in lately 21 has been making me a bit nervous. I’ve used Macs almost continuously since 22 about 1991 and enjoyed the experience tremendously. I’ve been an enthusiastic 23 advocate of the Mac ecosystem to anyone willing to put up with me wittering on 24 about it. However, for the first time (excepting the time I couldn’t afford the 25 hardware, which I’ll talk about more below), I am thinking about alternatives. 26 27 That’s how I ended up buying a mini PC and seeing what modern Linux on the 28 desktop has to offer. 29 30 Why? 31 32 Apple’s approach has always been opinionated. Up until now, that has mostly 33 been fine with me, as I have agreed with their choices, and appreciated the 34 more ‘curated’ approach to an operating system. I was able to go about my daily 35 computing life easily and comfortably, and found few roadblocks to what I 36 wanted to do. That is still largely true today, but there are two things on the 37 horizon that make me think that this might not always be the case. First, Apple 38 seems to be progressively locking down macOS so that it gets closer to iOS. 39 Security is increasingly important, but the recent security nags that [12] 40 people have reported on the betas of Sequoia seem ominous somehow. I’ve also 41 long wanted to use a proper tiling manager on macOS, but that has been 42 impossible without dodgy hacks that require disabling security features, though 43 [13]Aerospace seems like a cool way around that. Of course, things may change, 44 and Apple may respond to the pushback they are getting from ‘power’ users, but 45 it gives me an uncomfortable feeling. The second issue is AI. Talking about my 46 opinion on generative AI would be a whole other post, but let’s just say that I 47 don’t like it, I don’t want or need it, and I don’t want to be party to wasting 48 energy and water, just so that I can have AI summarise something for me that my 49 human brain is already capable of doing pretty well. I certainly don’t want it 50 forced on me. I barely even use Siri at the moment: I ask Siri to start timers, 51 and when in the car, read incoming messages. That’s it. Linux seems to be the 52 only OS where you don’t have AI forced on you if you don’t want it, and I 53 appreciate that. 54 55 It’s not my first go on Linux either. Back in the last days of MacOS 9, before 56 MacOS X appeared in 2001, I needed a new laptop but didn’t have the money to 57 buy an Apple laptop. I also knew that Apple was switching to Unix 58 underpinnings, so I decided to buy a cheap PC laptop and run a Linux distro on 59 it for a few years. I can’t remember which distro I settled on now, but I think 60 it might have been Open SuSE or RedHat? Anyway, I enjoyed the experience, and 61 found that knowing my way around the command line helped me a lot in the 62 transition to MacOS X when that arrived (and I got an Apple laptop again). I 63 also experimented with [14]NixOS on an old laptop back in 2018, but that was 64 just playing around and I didn’t try to use it as my full-time personal 65 computer. That’s what I wanted to explore this time: would Linux work for me as 66 a full time computing environment at home? 67 68 The hardware 69 70 I went back and forth on this quite a bit, but in the end decided to get a [15] 71 Minisforum Venus UM790Pro which is an AMD Ryzen based mini PC. I figured that 72 if my experiment didn’t work out, I could use it as a home backup server. My 73 choice was partly informed by seeing some third-party sellers selling it with 74 Linux installed (so I knew that the hardware was compatible), and partly 75 through watching a lot of YouTube videos where people installed Linux on it. 76 It’s not much to look at, but not as ugly as some mini PCs, and it has a good 77 range of ports, and very impressive performance for the form factor and price. 78 I ended up getting one with 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD. In a very pleasant change 79 from Apple hardware, you can upgrade both the memory and SSD. I’ve got a slot 80 free for each so there is lots of scope to cheaply double the memory and drive 81 space in the future if I need to. At the moment, I have plenty for my needs, as 82 my distro and window manager seem much more thrifty with RAM than macOS. The 83 CPU barely gets above a few percent, even building packages from source. It 84 seems to stay cool, and it is very quiet. 85 86 I have a Kensington Thunderbolt hub, so the new PC, my ageing Mac Mini and my 87 work laptop (when I work from home) can all connect to the peripherals and my 88 screen by a thunderbolt cable that I swap between machines. 89 90 Choosing a distro and desktop environment/window manager 91 92 I ran [16]ArchLinux on a Linode server to serve this blog for several years, 93 and came to enjoy the rolling distro life and the extensive range of packages 94 available, so I was pretty sure that I wanted something Arch-based. A few 95 distros have sprung up which use Arch as a base, but build a more friendly 96 installation experience and base system on top. I went with [17]EndeavourOS as 97 it seemed to strike a happy medium between making Arch more approachable 98 without installing too much or altering how you do things in Arch. 99 100 To get my bearings, I installed the system with the Gnome desktop environment, 101 and then KDE. I was incredibly impressed by how slick both the EndeavourOS 102 installation and both desktop environments are. Things have come on enormously 103 since the early 2000s (not surprisingly!), and almost everything worked very 104 nicely out of the box. Both desktop environments are so much more beautiful to 105 look at and more consistent visually and functionally than they used to be. 106 Even my Apple Magic Trackpad just worked without any configuration when plugged 107 in via USB. As a sidenote, this is the way I always use it. It may seem a weird 108 way to use a wireless peripheral, but if you plug it in, as you switch between 109 devices using the thunderbolt hub, they all see it as being attached and 110 active. In my experience, this is impossible to when all your devices are 111 nearby physically, even when they are all Apple devices. 112 113 Screenshot showing Emacs window on the left, editing this post in Markdown and 114 browser window on the right, previewing the post. 115 116 Emacs window on the left with the TokyoNight Moon colourscheme, and Vivaldi on 117 the right. 118 119 Of the two, I think that I preferred Gnome, at least for a personal computer. I 120 liked the way that hitting the Meta key (i.e. Command on a Mac keyboard) alone 121 would pop up an overview of your workspaces and windows, and that typing would 122 filter apps to launch. It’s quite unlike either the Apple or Windows approach, 123 but it is deceptively functional and slick. I also slightly prefer the more 124 minimal appearance of the windows and applications in Gnome, however it is a 125 bit less configurable. KDE Plasma is highly configurable, though that comes 126 with the potential to be overwhelming at first. It is very beautiful and 127 functional, but to me seemed a touch more professional but marginally less fun. 128 I’m interested to see how System76’s [18]Cosmic Desktop develops, as this has a 129 tiling window system by default, and seems to be somewhere in between KDE and 130 Gnome in terms of flexibility of configuration. 131 132 Screenshot showing two semi-transparent Alacritty terminal windows, one of 133 which showing system details with Fastfetch, and a Rofi launcher window 134 floating in the centre. 135 136 Alacritty terminal windows, Fastfetch and Rofi launcher. 137 138 Really, I could be happy with either, but wanted to see where I could get to 139 with a tiling window manager instead of a full desktop environment. Window 140 managers do much less for you than desktop environments, but you usually get to 141 design the status bar, set all the keyboard shortcuts, and use whichever 142 applications you like to build your own system. Both KDE and Gnome can do 143 tiling by installing and configuring plugins of various kinds, but I wanted to 144 try a window manager that tiled by default, and opted for [19]Hyprland. It is 145 one of a clutch of new window managers that use Wayland instead of the ancient 146 X11 system to manage the graphical interface. The downside of this is that 147 graphical applications that have not yet been updated to use Wayland have to be 148 handled using XWayland as a bridge, and this is not ideal if you use a HiDPI 149 (Retina) monitor as I do. In practice, I have found very few applications that 150 I want to use that are X11 only, so it hasn’t been too much of an issue. 151 152 Hyprland 153 154 I took the reasonably easy route by using [20]mylinuxforwork’s Hyprland starter 155 , which sets up a basic structure of configuration, provides a status bar, 156 wallpaper and so on. It’s nicely organised and easy to adapt and build on for 157 your needs. All the configuration for Hyprland is done through text format 158 configuration files. I love this approach, and much prefer it to hunting 159 through menus for settings. You can also easily backup and version your files 160 if you mess something up and want to revert to a previous version. 161 162 Once I had got to grips with what goes where, I really enjoyed configuring it. 163 Hyprland’s documentation is very good, and it is mostly quite self-explanatory. 164 The styling of windows and status bars and so on is done using CSS, so if you 165 know how to style a web page, it is all very familiar and easy. A nice touch is 166 that as you save the configuration files, the window manager reloads live, so 167 you can quickly adjust things without having to logout for most changes. 168 169 I also ran across [21]Archcraft where you can pay a small donation to download 170 a more complex and crafted configuration for Hyprland, which I did, as I liked 171 the look of the status bars and launchers in this setup. That’s what you see in 172 the screenshots here. I basically went all in on the [22]TokyoNight 173 colourscheme, and am ridiculously thrilled that I can get my terminal 174 colourscheme to match my Emacs theme, to match GUI application themes and my 175 launcher and status bar, and so on. That kind of visual consistency (using a 176 colourscheme of my own choice) is really fun. I’m still working on it and may 177 change the layout a bit, but I’m really happy with the way it looks and 178 functions. 179 180 Problems along the way 181 182 I’m impressed that I have had remarkably few problems. The most annoying 183 problem I had when installing was that — by default — you seem to have to grant 184 permission as a user to connect to Thunderbolt devices. This is a problem if 185 your monitor connects only via Thunderbolt, as you obviously need to see what 186 you are doing! I solved this by taking the PC down to the living room and 187 connecting to the TV by HDMI, then using bolt to authorise and save the 188 authorisation for the Thunderbolt hub. I still had a problem when booting up: I 189 could see when the login manager (I was using SDDM at the time) started up from 190 the power to the USB devices turning off briefly then on again, but the screen 191 stayed dark. I found that if I entered my password blindly, the desktop would 192 start and the screen would display, but this was hardly ideal. I futzed about 193 with this for a while, before finding out that it was some issue with SDDM and 194 switching to GDM to manage login and launching of desktop environments or 195 window managers worked fine. If you have HDMI ports on your monitor, you won’t 196 need to go through this dance. I gather also that some BIOS have a setting to 197 disable the security for Thunderbolt devices temporarily, but I couldn’t see 198 that in the BIOS of this PC (maybe because it came with Windows pre-installed — 199 I could not get out of there fast enough…). 200 201 Final thoughts (for now!) 202 203 I’ve had so much fun with this, and I am really enjoying Linux. I love a 204 keyboard driven system, and I really appreciate the way I can set things up to 205 manipulate windows, move between workspaces, switch windows and so on, all 206 through my own choice of keyboard shortcuts. I’ve also discovered some great 207 software (some of which is cross-platform) that I will talk about in later 208 posts. 209 210 I need to use this system full time for a few weeks and months to see what I 211 can and can’t replace from the Apple ecosystem. Inter-operability with my 212 iPhone and Watch is one thing, but I’m going to see how much I miss that over 213 time. 214 215 One last thing: I like giving my computers names. I have often used animal 216 species names, using a sequence of penguin species (which started when I first 217 used Linux), then bird species. My current work laptop is named with the 218 scientific name for the genus of cheetahs, which amused me as a dual joke about 219 the speed of the M1 chips and a throwback to MacOS Cheetah (MacOS X 10.0) until 220 I realised that I can neither spell nor pronounce it properly. 221 222 Given that this PC is running EndeavourOS, there was an immediate choice of 223 name — Morse. I’ll get me coat… 224 225 [23]← older 226 [24]newer → 227 228 — @ 229 230 • Reposts: 231 • Replies: 232 • Favourites: 233 234 [25] Discuss on Mastodon 235 236 Activity elsewhere 237 238 • [26] 239 • [27] 240 • [28] 241 • [29] 242 243 Social media 244 245 • [30] 246 • [31] 247 • [32] 248 • [33] 249 250 Copyright © 2002-2024 bsag • Powered by [34]Hugo • Running on [35]Netlify • 251 Styled with plain CSS by me • Analytics by [36]Tinylytics 252 253 [37]but she's a girl... created by [bsag_avatar] bsag (she/her pronouns, and 254 known as bsag pretty much everywhere online) and based in Birmingham, West 255 Midlands, United Kingdom. 256 257 I’ve been ‘bsag’ on the web for more than 20 years now. I’m a biologist by 258 profession, and a nerd by inclination. I have way too many hobbies, from sewing 259 clothes to designing and making tiny custom keyboards. 260 261 262 References: 263 264 [1] https://www.rousette.org.uk/ 265 [3] https://www.rousette.org.uk/about/ 266 [4] https://www.rousette.org.uk/archives/ 267 [5] https://micro.rousette.org.uk/ 268 [6] https://photos.rousette.org.uk/ 269 [7] https://www.rousette.org.uk/tags/ 270 [8] https://www.rousette.org.uk/archives/exploring-desktop-linux/ 271 [9] https://www.rousette.org.uk/tags/geekery 272 [10] https://www.rousette.org.uk/tags/linux 273 [12] https://sixcolors.com/post/2024/08/apples-permissions-features-are-out-of-balance/ 274 [13] https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace 275 [14] http://www.rousette.org.uk/archives/nixos-and-the-art-of-os-configuration/ 276 [15] https://store.minisforum.com/collections/all-product/products/minisforum-um790-pro?variant=43865372492021 277 [16] https://archlinux.org/ 278 [17] https://endeavouros.com/ 279 [18] https://system76.com/cosmic 280 [19] https://hyprland.org/ 281 [20] https://github.com/mylinuxforwork/hyprland-starter 282 [21] https://wiki.archcraft.io/docs/wayland-compositors/hyprland/ 283 [22] https://github.com/folke/tokyonight.nvim 284 [23] https://www.rousette.org.uk/archives/devilish-fun-with-a-modeless-modal-editor/ 285 [24] https://www.rousette.org.uk/archives/exploring-desktop-linux-p2/ 286 [25] https://social.lol/@bsag/113028981223112542 287 [26] https://www.rousette.org.uk/index.xml 288 [27] https://bsag.omg.lol/now 289 [28] https://letterboxd.com/bsag/ 290 [29] https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/33331686-bsag 291 [30] https://micro.blog/bsag 292 [31] https://social.lol/@bsag 293 [32] https://www.flickr.com/photos/bsag/ 294 [33] https://github.com/bsag 295 [34] https://gohugo.io/ 296 [35] https://www.netlify.com/ 297 [36] https://tinylytics.app/ 298 [37] https://www.rousette.org.uk/